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Viggo Mortensen: New York
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Cat and Estel just launched a fresh new German website, Viggo World, featuring Viggo Mortensen's biography, filmography, books and CDs, plus the latest Viggo news. They would love to hear from Viggo's fans. -DMc
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Viggo Mortensen has been starring in films since the mid-1980s. He gained a whole new group of fans with his appearance as Aragorn in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Multi-talented, Viggo is ... an accomplished actor, poet, painter, and photographer.
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Viggo is the eldest son of Grace and Viggo P. Mortensen. His father, who farmed in Denmark, met his mother, a New Yorker, in Norway. They wed and moved to New York where Viggo Jr. was born, before moving to South America where Viggo Sr. managed chicken farms and ranches in Venezuela and Argentina. Two more sons were born, Charles and Walter, before the marriage grew increasingly unhappy. When Viggo was seven, his parents sent him to a a strict boarding school, isolated in the foothills of the mountains of Argentina. Then, at age eleven, his parents divorced.
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Born in New York City, on October 20, 1958, to an American mother and a Danish father, Mortensen spent his first years in Manhattan and the rest of his youth living in Argentina, Venezuela, and Denmark. Returning to Manhattan in the early '80s, he studied acting at Warren Robertson's Theatre Workshop and then embarked upon a stage career before moving to Los Angeles. There, he earned a Dramalogue Critics Award for his performance in a Coast Playhouse production of Bent and became a familiar figure on the L.A. punk scene (something that was aided by his brief marriage to Exene Cervenka, lead singer of the punk band X). Following his debut in Witness, Mortensen began working steadily in a number of diverse films, becoming a familiar but not instantly recognizable face to filmgoers. He did some of his more memorable work as a series of louts and villains, in such films as The Indian Runner (1991, written and directed by Sean Penn), which cast him as David Morse's morally questionable brother; Carlito's Way (1993), in which he played a paraplegic ex-con who tries to snitch on Al Pacino; and The Prophecy (aka God's Army) (1995), which required the actor, in the role of Lucifer, to rip out Christopher Walken's heart and then eat it.
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Mortensen can be forgiven for not watching much TV--the busy Renaissance man just doesn't have the time. There's his role in ``Psycho,'' in which he plays Anne Heche's semi-clueless boyfriend, Sam Loomis. His art show at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., has been extended. And he has a new book, Recent Forgeries (Smart Art Press, $27), which features his paintings, photographs and poetry, as well as a CD of his poems and songs. On record, Mortensen's speaking voice--especially in Spanish--actually is more melodic and alluring than his singing. Confident and clear, he draws listeners in as he spins tales of deceit and humor.
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Mortensen's work certainly paid off, with The Fellowship Of The Ring and its follow-ups The Two Towers and The Return Of The King becoming some of the most popular movies ever made. At last his striking looks and fierce intensity had found a home - Aragorn was no pretty boy, after all, rather a flawed, dangerous but honourable warrior. Viggo would move on to star in Hidalgo, the true story of Frank T. Hopkins, a courier rider for the Pony Express who, in 1890, travelled with his titular horse to Saudi to compete in a dangerous marathon race with a huge prize at stake. Naturally, he would not over-burden himself with film work. He ... concentrated on a new album, with guest appearances from his Lord Of The Rings co-stars Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan. And there'd be another book of photos, called Miyelo and loosely based on the massacre of the Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek, wherein his colourful abstract shots would be accompanied by pertinent quotes from the likes of TS Eliot and Khalil Gibran.
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